As Craigslist users have no doubt witnessed over the last several years, the site is taking on larger and larger numbers of advertisements for local sales of odds and ends, big and small (cars to handheld gadgets). Chris Albrecht of GigaOM, with figures reportedly gleaned direct from the source, has shown as much in a post published late last week.

The number of for-sale postings nearly doubled in the space of 12 months on the classifieds site. What was slightly under 9,000,000 for the month of June 2007, grew to 18 million plus in May 2008, subsequently dropping to about 17.8 million in June 2008.

Naturally, the same cannot be said for eBay. It’s a very different beast. Still, if eBay’s historic strength in second-hand sales is anything to go by, and consumers are pushed to sell off belongings, the auctioneer is presumably the choice outlet to distribute things unnecessary and unwanted. (So to speak.) Thus, I suspect the company may well manage to pull through the coming seasons on fairly sound footing, despite the relative gloom of the retail sector.

According to recent announcements, revenue at eBay grew to $2.20 billion in the second quarter, from $2.19bn in the first, so is it by no means speeding along uphill. And one must also take into account the need for consumers to increase spending on eBay to match any presumed influx of product listings. Which is far from guaranteed. It goes without saying that while that national taxpayer rebate in the US from late spring may have helped things along for the summer, its effectiveness is expected to peter out in the coming months.

Regardless, I ask you: What do you think is in eBay’s future for late-2008, early-2009? Is it in a convenient position for the times? Or is the company in for bitter figures? Is the company’s internal affairs and issues with the powerseller crowd too big an elephant to allow eBay to continue growing - albeit quite slowly?

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